Dependent Drinkers and Alcoholics (recovering or active) Support Thread II?

[kokeshi]

Welcome to the thread, the purpose of this is to give anyone, who is having any trouble with their drinking, to come and post about it honestly and without judgement.

There are many of us that use the thread for support and encouragement: some in recovery, others just needing a place to share about their worries. It's been going on in one form of another for a while now and has helped many people.

Everybody's welcome, no matter what stage your drinking is at.

Jump right in, the water's fine

[ Teasle shuffles off, grumbling about technology, and wearing man-sized shoes]

Just checked it teasle, wow, you have fabulous bone structure! You look nothing like Lily Savage. Your DD is really beautiful too...she has good genes

Totally agree about the bones. Fab lips too . DD is very pretty .

Sorry if I bullied you into it

S'ok- am gonna change it now you've seen it!
(To what though...!)

hello its me again ,i feel like mr ben popping up when you least expect it! Im so glad you had a good meeting ,those were great words ,i dont know about you but over the last year all i was able to concentrate on was the negative parts of my life ,what i hadnt got /done /was and wine made it easy to stay in that mindset and not think about how I could actually change anything . Look at you ,9 months off the drugs ,thats fantastic. God do i sound all condescending? sorry if i do ,had a shite day at work and feel like gibbering ,will go and gibber to myself

Onto day 4 with no alcohol,and have cunningly volunteered to work tomorrow night thus removing temptation

HI Justwater- thats brilliant- you getting on ok then? Have you started to reign in your caffeine consumption yet?!

hell no (to the caffeine consumption) ,in other respects im fine,havent told my Dh what im doing and he hasnt said anything as yet ,not sure why i havent told him ,i think its incase i have a relapse. Not planning one though

I know what you mean- more people know now about my sobriety than ever have before. In one way its good to tell people for the support, but then its hard if you relapse- for them and for you, if you see what I mean?
I guess for me, the honesty thing came very gradually. I hid a lot of my drinking from friends, and some have been surprised as to the extent of it.
What are you up to tonight then- any plans?

vegging in front of the tv ,quite a busy weekend with work and all ,which is good ,plenty of distractions!!!how about you?

Have been wrapping birthday presents for DD2's birthday tomorrow. Might go and see some friends later. May also pop back onto the thread to see if anyone is about!

I remember someone saying that if they had a drink in the early evening, that they wouldn't be able to get anything done. At the time I was drinking heavily, and I didn't do much in the evening, to be honest, just the bare minimum. Doing/planning things sort of interfered with my drinking- thats how I sort of saw it at the time. I didn't see how it gradually took over my life. Seems bleedin' obvious now,like.
Anyway, I digress.

Its great how you are doing, JW.

Anyone else about tonight?

LOL teasle...;um what can I say? Your accessories are very becoming. The bleached bouffant definitely gets you noticed as well. Is that your weekend get up?

Hey JW, well done on day 4. In understand on keeping it quite, you are doing it just for yourself anyway so there's no need till you feel comfortable. Are you worried about his reaction? I'm really impressed with you putting things in place for the days you know are going to be difficult for you.

I'm soooooo tired. Been at another meeting tonight and I've been on the go since early this morning. It's exhausting talking about yourself!

How's the night been for everyone?

I'm quickly popping in to say hi.

A sober night for me last night too, woke up really early and been on the go all day too. Ended up walking my friends dogs for an hour just to get exercise and fresh air. Haven't even got the energy to go to the off licence anyways, so am going for a hot bath, wait for kids to get back from exh's and I'll get my backside to bed.

I did stock up on fruit juice and J2O's LOL, bought a stack of 25p paperbacks from the charity shop. Why, oh why did I buy a canvas? I can't even bloody well paint! Something to do I guess!

Happy birthday Teasle's DD. You are so right in saying as soon as that first drink hit in the evening, nothing else got done, it kinda messed up the drinking routine. I still can't seem to see how /when / why it took over my life. But early days for me yet though. I'll always remeber digging around in a hungover state in the mornings looking for DD school uniform, which should''ve been washed and ironed the night before. You know what I mean. Have a great day tomorrow x x Nice pic BTW

I don't want to brag, but I want to go back to AA next week and tell them all I've been sober a week. It might not sound like much, but it'll be a milestone for me. Someone at AA yesterday told me that maybe a week is just too much and go with the 'just for today' mantra.
I met soooo many lovely people in the meeting yesterday, swapped a lot of numbers and a lot of them lived local. Friendships could potentially be made and I don't want to let anyone down.

Kokeshi, it was one of the meetings we discussed on msn. I went to the Gants Hill one. I will explain more about witchcraft another time hun. Fridays and Saturdays are really hard for me as they were always 'pissed nights'. Then I tried getting it under control and just having a taste on the weekends. But reading the literature, there is no controlled drinking. At least not now. I used to be able to control it, but not anymore.

Time to pick up the phone for me now and call a couple of people I swapped numbers with. Weekends are so hard.

JWFMT, keep with it girl! your doing fantastically well!!!

Hello and happy weekend hugs ((())) to everyone. Hope you all got nice things planned?

(must stop typing now LOL, but it keeps my mind busy)

Hi everyone

Justwater - keep it up, you're doing great

Thinking back to plans/stuff interfering with drinking. I used to plan to do things but I'd always have to have a drink first, and then nothing would get done. It didn't occur to me that it wasn't normal to want vodka while I was writing cheques/cooking dinner/doing housework, and that if I had one nothing would get done because I wouldn't stop. It was only towards the very end that I stopped planning stuff and just gave into it.

Teasle - happy birthday to DD2 tomorrow. How old is she?

I'm feeling a bit miserable tonight. EX-P moved out this evening, which was what I wanted but I feel horribly guilty and sad that he's on his own now. I've no cigarettes or cans of diet coke left either (should have asked him to do one last favour before he left maybe not actually) so I'm off to bed soon.

I'm going to see how I feel in the morning about lack of caffeine/nicotine. I'm thinking of giving the cigarettes up and cutting down on diet coke, but I know it's not advised. I'm finding it hard to stick to 30 cigarettes a day and I'm getting through a 15 can box of diet cokes each day. It's costing a fortune and obviously it's not healthy. I've tried cutting down but if they're here I drink/smoke them and then panic when I start running out.

Anyone other smokers like to confess their habit? I'm spending around £100 a week on my habit (more than I ever spent on booze) and it's making me feel a bit sick thinking about what I could be doing with that money.

Ooh that's a lotta wonga BM. Thankfully I've never smoked, but if I had ever taken it up I'd probably be a chain smoker. I have that kinda compulsive personality, which means I still have to watch out that I'm not using other things instead of drink. You can convince yourself nothing is as bad as drinking because there's not such a stigma about other addictions but IME they can really hold you back.

I went through a diet-coke and coffee phase but it just made me feel really sick after a while. I have been known to venture into other compulsive behaviour though.

Yep, the ciggies have taken over from booze, and the diet coke is because I'm used to drinking all the time. I know vodka is worse, even if it's cheaper, and at least nicotine and caffeine don't affect my behaviour and make me act liek an arsehole .

I need to sort it out though. 30 is the least I'll smoke in a 24 hour period, sometimes it's 40 . Yesterday when I was arguing with EX-P I went through a pack of 20 in just under 5 hours . I'm definetly using them.

I've really tried to cut down but I can't do it. I've tried buying a pack of 20 in the morning and making them last, but they don't last and I'm back at the shop by dinner time.

I've got some patches in the bathroom so I'll go an stick one of those on. I've only been without for an hour and I'm irritable already. I kept getting chest pains over Christmas (could have been indigestion) but it worried me. I suppose the NHS will start their grim adverts soon as well and that will be even worse. Right, that's it then, I'm giving up smoking [scared]

I've just worked out that 30 cigarettes take me 4 hours to smoke each day - and that's without emptying ashtrays, finding lighters, going somewhere appropriate to smoke, going to the shop to buy them.

It's a wonder I get anything done. I'm not looking forward to this though. Last time I stopped smoking (I think I lasted 11 weeks) I didn't sleep for 4 days

You know there's a 12 step fellowship for everything nowadays, it just makes me aware that I should give just as much to dealing with these other things as I do with drinking. It's just difficult to admit that you may never be done with all this recovery business .

I only ever feel like that when I know I have a lot of work - and pain - to go through and in reality I'm so glad I'm on this side f it.

PurpleOne, I wish you hadn't sent me that thing about finding out who has blocked/deleted you on msn! I'm feeling pissed off now, even though most of the people I would never have talked to anyway! Hah, my ego has taken a bashing I think. Is it very childish to block them back and then send them a link to it!? Fnar.

Ohh how do you find out who's blocked you on MSN. I know how to find out who's deleted me, but not blocked.

Actually, maybe I should explain Kokeshi . Everyone is blocked on my MSN list because it signs me in as online and I get nervous about speaking to people. I'm only signed into it so I can get my emails.

11 weeks is fantastic! Do they have any of those stop smoking groups down your way? I've heard that the success rate for smokers who attend them vs those who do it alone is 50% better. Might just be NHS propaganda though!

Block Yell. Don't worry BM, it was my old email address I was using. Are you sure you want to do this!?

I did go to one of the NHS supposrt groups when I stopped a couple of years ago. I hated it and told the leader that I wouldn't be coming back.

I was the only one under 60 in the room and got paired up with this old man. We were supposed to swap numbers and chat outside the group for support, but I really felt embarrassed about ringing this old guy up.

I might join one of the nicotinell/nicorette online groups if I need to rant. Actually there's probably a thread on here. I'll have a look.

"Congratulations - no-one has blocked or deleted you" [smug].

Actually, I know that's not true anyway. I think if the blocker has ticked the option for his status only to be visible to his allowed contacts, then that tool won't pick it up.

A quick way of knowing who's deleted you is to open up your contacts page, go to tools, options, privacy, and right click on each contact. If the delete option is available you know that they've already deleted you.

LOL! I see you've investigated this before! I'm NOT that bothered, at least they're not popping up on my screen window anymore whilst I'm trying to hide from them! Wish I'd done it first though .

That support group sounds nasty. I'll be rooting for you any way. My bro has stopped smoking this week too, been off it since monday. Yay for all you soon to be ex-smokers!

No, I'm not that bothered either really. When I found out how to check who'd deleted me it was a wake up call - there were f*cking loads . That was one of the reasons I gave it up when I got sober. It's embarrassing that I used to be that boring/rude to everyone.

How is your brother quitting? Is he just going cold turkey or using patches. I find with cold turkey it takes 3 days for the cravings to go away, but those 3 days are pretty rough. If I use patches/gum it's relatively easy but I know the withdrawal phase is looming and they're pretty expensive.